Time itself is divided before and after Him.

Yet no likeness exists of the most famous man who ever lived.

If the Word was made flesh and lived among us, what did He look like? Was He short or tall? Dark or fair-skinned? Noble or commonplace in appearance? Thousands of people saw Him close up, following Him everywhere, sometimes not allowing Him to rest or sleep; at least twenty people got to know Him very well but not one of them either left a written record or passed on a description of how Jesus of Nazareth looked.

Does it matter what Jesus looked like?

It does if we consider that Jesus had only three years to finish His ministry, and how quickly three years pass in an ordinary life. I find it difficult to imagine that He was sent into the world with a forgettable face. Popular paintings of Him show a melancholy and rather anaemic-looking man, completely at variance with my imaginary picture of Him: glowing, radiant, dark hair, dark eyes. Someone who would stand out in a crowd. Is this Hindu baggage? Of course it is. It seems strange to me that not once does it say in the gospels that He smiled or laughed---something hard to believe of a man who called out to a stranger perched in a tree, “Won’t you step down, Im coming to your house for dinner.” Could anyone have said that without smiling reassuringly at the sitter in the tree? When He restored the widow’s son to life, would He have met her joyous response unsmilingly? Impossible to imagine such a situation. The grateful lepers, the healed paralytic, the satisfied crowds who were fed. Surely Jesus smiled his work to see !

But about His general appearance too, nothing is said. Artists from different parts of the world show Him as one of their own kind. He is either olive-skinned in Spanish paintings or a coldly handsome upper-class Brit in English works of art. I turned to records left by saints and mystics, searching for word-visions of Him. St. Augustine states flatly that we don’t know what either He or His mother had looked like. St. Jerome is a little more dreamy and imaginative. “Had He not had something heavenly in His face and His eyes, the apostles would never have followed Him at his word. Nor would those who came to arrest Him have fallen to the ground.” Julian of Norwich dwells only on His wounds and how He paled slowly before He died on the cross.

So I went back to the best biography in the world from which I’d like to quote just two instances that give us a clue of the power and majesty of Jesus’ face and expresssion.

The first is when He decided to emerge from His silence and obscurity. When He was ready, He put down the tools of the carpenter and went to where His rude strong cousin had been booming away in the desert calling on the Jews to give up their bad ways, and ready themselves for the great Redeemer who unknown to them, was already in their midst. For four hundred years no prophet had announced himself in the service of Israel’s God. So when John the Baptist began prophesying the coming of their long-awaited Messiah, a thrill ran through every Jewish heart. Thousands came to John to be baptized in the River Jordan. Jesus patiently took his place in the queue. The impression made on John by the very look of Jesus as He moved through the throngs and stepped up in front of him is a far better description than what many words could do. The man of rock faltered. He fell silent. He drew back feeling that this was no subject for the bath of repentance. John and Jesus appear never to have met before though their families were related and the connection between them had been predicted before their birth.

The second instance I dwell on with delight is when Jesus’ indignation at the disgraceful trade in the temple caused Him to take the whip to those merchants who were literally polluting the temple. The same look of irresistible regal purity that had startled the Baptist prevented any resistance or counter attack from the ignoble gang in the Temple. Onlookers must have recognized the kind of prophet from olden days before whom crowds and kings had quailed.

Although The Book of Isaiah written five centuries before Christ asks, “To whom can you compare him?” was it likely that the child of a Palestinian village girl would grow up to look like Solomon or David, both famed for their magnetism and beauty? Well, according to Hindu religious literature ----stories and long poems---there is no such thing as a plain-looking god. But….if Jesus was as distinctive as I believe He must have been why did the Roman soldiers have trouble identifying him? Clearly, when they arrived in the Garden, led there by Judas, Jesus had not stood out in the rag-tag group. With His indifference to clothes He was probably the shabbiest. Just a while before He had sweated blood so He must have looked exhausted. It had taken Judas’ kiss for the Romans to single out the troublesome rabbi. They hadn’t been able to tell at a single glance.

What about us? Will we recognize Him the moment we set eyes on Him? For sure, He won’t look like either a prince or a lamb. No. Jesus’ beauty was not the brilliance of a thousand suns; the moon was not a reflection of His toe-nails; the peacock was not envious of His gait; the lightning did not compete with His eyes. It lay in his refusal to pick up a club or sword. Simon Peter (who had spent three years with the divine master of non-violence) had pulled out his sword and sliced off Malchus’ ear. What would have happened if Jesus had said He was not ready to drink from God’s cup? What if He had not prohibited violence? Armed soldiers would have eventually subdued Peter and killed the group in the Garden of Gethsamane. There would have been no redeeming story of the Cross. There would have been no Resurrection; no Pentecost; no Church; no Gospel; no Eucharist, no saints, no martyrs. Jesus would have been forgotten as just another violent revolutionary. The world might have gone up in flames long ago. Instead, Jesus’ insistence on non-violence literally saves us all.

Does it matter what Jesus looked like?